The mum, believed to be a Russian woman, gave birth with the help of her husband and a Russian doctor who specialises in water births. Pictures of the doctor and the baby’s dad carrying the baby out of the waves in the resort town of Dahab, Egypt, went viral after being shared on social media. The images, which show the baby with its umbilical cord still attached and its placenta in a plastic container, were taken by a tourist from a hotel balcony. The baby’s mum had just given birth after going into the sea while wearing a bikini, according to eyewitnesses. Some Facebook users praised the apparent “beauty” and “easiness” of the baby’s water birth.

Dahab, which lies 80km northeast of the popular resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, has become increasingly popular with mums-to-be aiming for a sea water birth, according to local media reports. The woman, her husband and their baby have not been named and there is no report on the baby’s gender or latest condition. The Red Sea (also the Erythraean Sea) is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. To the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion. The sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley.

The Red Sea has a surface area of roughly 438,000 km2 (169,100 mi2),[1][2] is about 2250 km (1398 mi) long and, at its widest point, 355 km (220.6 mi) wide. It has a maximum depth of 3,040 m (9,970 ft) in the central Suakin Trough,[3] and an average depth of 490 m (1,608 ft). However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life and corals. The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the world’s northernmost tropical sea. Red Sea is a direct translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa (Ερυθρὰ Θάλασσα), Latin Mare Rubrum (alternatively Sinus Arabicus, literally “Arabian Gulf”), Arabic: البحر الأحمر‎, translit. Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar (alternatively بحر القلزم Baḥr Al-Qulzum, literally “the Sea of Clysma”), Somali Badda Cas and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī (ቀይሕ ባሕሪ). The name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured Trichodesmium erythraeum near the water’s surface.[5] A theory favored by some modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south, just as the Black Sea’s name may refer to north. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions.[6] Herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably.

he earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, as they attempted to establish commercial routes to Punt. One such expedition took place around 2500 BC, and another around 1500 BC (by Hatshepsut). Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea.[12] Historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible.[13] The biblical Book of Exodus tells the tale of the Israelites’ crossing of a body of water, which the Hebrew text calls Yam Suph (Hebrew: יַם סוּף‬). Yam Suph was traditionally identified as the Red Sea. Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882‒942 CE), in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, identifies the crossing place of the Red Sea as Baḥar al-Qulzum, meaning the Gulf of Suez.